It’s said nature abhors a vacuum. Strictly speaking, I’m not sure that’s true; the universe is essentially empty, only a tiny percentage of the universe has anything in it.
But in politics and society it is true, if you remove one set of rules or order from a social structure, it’ll be replaced by another.
Over the last 100 years we’ve deconstructed the rules of Western Civilization, supposedly in search of greater freedoms, only to see the resultant vacuum filled with a loose patch-work of feel-good, often conflicting, nonsense and inevitably with bad ideas. It has left much of the West rudderless and morally empty.
No thinking human being can be unmoved by the tales that have emerged in the last several weeks about the Catholic Church and many of its priests. Much of it, sadly, is nothing new; we’ve been hearing tales of sexual assault by some priests for years. And about efforts by some senior Church officials to cover them up. But the assertion by Cardinal Vigano that the Pope had explicit knowledge that a Cardinal was directly involved in this horrible behavior – and then allowed that Cardinal to resume normal activities – seems simply inconceivable.
There’s a line in the Good Book that “to whom much is given, much is expected.” McCarrick is a Cardinal, a prince of the Church, to whom great power and status is given. More, much, much more was expected of him. His behavior – apparently compounded by that of the Pope in seemingly discounting it – piled on top of the egregious behavior that has come before it, tells of a seriously weakened Church bureaucracy.
But so what, you might ask, particularly if you’re not Catholic. It might even be good, in the grand scheme of things, a silver lining in an otherwise terribly dark cloud, that these princes be brought low, that they lose some of their standing. Then perhaps the Church can focus efforts on the good works it does do, day-in and day-out.
Perhaps
Last week David French, writing in National Review, discussed why Protestants should care about what is happening in the Church. It’s an excellent article. But if anything, he doesn’t go far enough. For the crisis in the Catholic Church may well represent a vacuum that no other organization can fill, one that alone can must fill.
If we were able to endure that temporary vacuum between the fall of some of these cardinals and bishops and the recovery of the Church’s reputation as a moral institution, all well and good. But there are other forces eager to fill that void, to push aside the great good that the Church does (but seems mostly hidden behind this cloud of evil behavior), and steer society in other directions.
The fact is the Church represents the practical moral foundation of Western Civilization – and the US that moral concept put into practice; Western Civilization cannot survive without both being healthy.
Yet over the last 4 or 5 decades the moral certitude of both institutions has eroded away. As they’ve eroded, both have found it harder and harder to maintain their positions. And with that erosion we’ve seen a rise in moral relativism across society, an acceptance of moral standards built on the shifting sands of public acceptance vice any philosophic bedrock.
As has happened before in the Church bureaucracy, and in every government in history, the accumulation of power, and the abuse of that power, has supplanted ideals. Power becomes the real reason for everything; individuals become entrenched in bureaucracies, the bureaucracies become entrenched in the system and refuse to cede power, irrespective of the law, ethics or morals. For some senior figures in the Church accumulating power was seemingly all they really cared about. When they thought it was threatened, they acted to protect it. The same is happening now inside certain parts of the US government.
Humans are all weak; if there’s a problem with the Church bureaucracy today its roots are the same, the weakness of humanity, the lure of material things, of power and pleasure.
In the Church – and in our government – the answer is simple: those who abuse power must be found and cut out like a cancer.
From the seminaries to the curia, the Church needs cleansing; and from the schoolhouse teaching civics to the halls of Congress America’s institutions need a similar cleansing. We must begin now.
Copyright 2018 Arrias
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